Posted
by
timothyon Tuesday December 29, 2009 @04:00PM
from the now-that's-what-I-call-political-science dept.

uncadonna writes "According to activist group The Yes Men, the government of Canada has shut down two parody websites criticizing Canada's poor environmental policy. The article goes on to claim that 'In response to Environment Canada's request, Serverloft immediately turned off a whole block of IP addresses, knocking out more than 4500 websites that had nothing to do with the parody sites or the activists who created them. Serverloft was shown no warrant, and never called the web hosting company about the shutdown.'"

I can somewhat understand where the Canadian government is coming from on this one. The.gc.ca domain is Canadian Government sites. This site is obviously designed to look like an official government site - using a domain that could confuse people.

I have a problem with censorship, but I also have a problem with intentionally misleading people, then screaming censorship when the folks you're trying to quietly impersonate come after you.

I have a problem with censorship, but I also have a problem with intentionally misleading people, then screaming censorship when the folks you're trying to quietly impersonate come after you.

I can't disagree with that, but the real misdeed here is the lack of due process and the negligent clobbering of the unrelated 4500 sites. I'm not a Canadian lawyer, but I sure wish I was one right now.

Indeed, why did Serverloft, a German company (according to TFA) react at all?

They should just have shown a huge phat finger to the Canucks, and say "you can't get us accross the huuuuge ocean". After all, it's not as if Canada was in a position of unleashing an Operation Desert Storm over Germany. One hosting company to avoid!

And such behavior would be entirely appropriate: after all that's exactly how Canada behaves when German citizens that have been wrongfully imprisoned in Canada want to s

I can understand anyone or any group not wanting to be impersonated and having said impostors make false statements or claims on your behalf, but this is ridiculous on the part of both the Canadian gov't & that hosting company. I don't know the specifics of Canuck law, but considering it's a parliamentary democracy, I can't imagine there aren't some due processes of law by which an aggrieved party, whether government department or private citizen, can ask the police/justice department to look into just

We need to take censorship seriously. This begins by refusing to position fraud masquerading as parody as a freedom of speech issue, which is terribly disrespectful of real censorship. Freedom of speech was never meant to be used as a day pass to Dorkville.

I can well imagine the childhood of someone who signs up the domain ec-gc.ca to engage in serious debate. I was played against his likeness in an online poker room yesterday, a fellow playing under the identity "Custard Pump" with a unkempt mop of hair

While I agree a bit, you apparently don’t know the Yes Men.They are known for stunts where they impersonate government agencies, and then go e.g. to conferences and look how far they can go, until the audience starts to complain.

Turns out they can go further than even the tinfoil hat crowd could imagine.They for example presented how one could catch the shit that’s going down the toilet, and making re-burgers out of them, to feed the 3rd world. Or how slavery is too expensive and the current model of letting them work there where you don’t even have to feed them at all, is much better.And they got a whole room applauding at them.

They aim for a seriously presented but blatantly obvious and over the top parody.And their point is, that people don’t get the parody and think it’s actually real.

Seems they won again. And we can all laugh at the Canadian government. The only reason we don’t laugh at you too, is because we can’t assume you did read TFA or saw their work.:) So I give you that.

I can somewhat understand where the Canadian government is coming from on this one. The.gc.ca domain is Canadian Government sites. This site is obviously designed to look like an official government site - using a domain that could confuse people.

I have a problem with censorship, but I also have a problem with intentionally misleading people, then screaming censorship when the folks you're trying to quietly impersonate come after you.

On another note, I'll say that maybe people shouldn't use Serverloft if they can't rely on them to at least make an effort to stand up for their customers.

Do either of you know of any good restaurants and guesthouses in Yanale Heh? I'm backpacking in that direction and plan to arrive there sometime early next week so long as the buses can make it through the roads during monsoon season.

I know it's unfair to expect an AC to RTFA, but if you had - it stated that the government requested Serverloft "make every effort to prevent any further attempts concerning other environment-related domains (enviro, ec-gc, etc.) originating from [their] servers." Serverloft responded by shutting down a block of 4500 IP addresses. While this request from the government is arguably overreaching - Serverloft's actions in response to the request were basic incompetence. Serverloft is where most of your complaint should be directed. The government's request may be naive, but Serverloft was plain stupid.

Lies or deception coming from government or from lobby groups are the same. It should not be tolerated. I'm glad our government is taking action and I would expect the same from anyone who is being misrepresented. This is not a freedom of speech issue but a trade name issue.

So a few questions pop to mind. Did Serverloft shutdown the sites? Or was there a temporary outage that these "yesmen" interrupted as a deliberate take down? If Serverloft did take the sites down, why were 4500 other sites affected? Can they not shut down one or two sites without taking down every other site that shares the same IP? Why would a German ISP respond (briefly) to a request from "some guy" in a government job in another country, and then enable the

Well, you do need to work on that bit in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which allows for prior restraint. (i.e. you have freedom of speech until a judge rules that you don't).

The issue here is that an ISP outside of Canada got a nastygram from the Government of Canada and folded like origami paper rather than saying "We're sorry. This is not Canada. Please feel free to seek legal remedy from a court in this jurisdiction and we will comply with that request immediately!"

Our charter of rights and freedoms works fine. S.1 however states that the government can override any part of it for a 'just' cause. Seriously they need to stop teaching kids in highschool criminal and civil law and teach them government policy instead.

Oh you might have noticed that the website(s) aren't censored either. You've just happily flown off the handle for a well known hack-group that does this stuff. OTOH the Federal Government can get them shut down for use of a domain name/site that looks c

"The net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." [wikiquote.org] The solution is obvious: Move your servers to a more free-speech friendly country. When the US and Canada start to see that taking down sites at the drop of a hat is very harmful to their hosting businesses, then maybe they will do something about it.

Yes... except that we are quickly running out of free-speech friendly countries (Canada was one of the most free). Soon we'll have to seriously think about putting pirate senders in orbit, just like the old off-shore pirate radio stations of the last century.

That's what I'm starting to think, and I'm finding it absolutely hilarious, given that this is exactly the sort of stunt "The Yes Men" stage all the time. This particular stunt would be peanuts compared to some of their others.

At least for the last 120 years they put some effort into hiding the fact that we are in fact all powerless pesants under the heel of an elite in which the law only serves said elite. At least we had the illusion of "equality, the rule of law, and freedom."

I for one an dissapointed in my ruling shadow government and would like to formally request that a new shadow government that plans to treat me like a pesant, rise up, over throw the existing elite, and es

You know what's REALLY funny is that I recently watched a documentary comparing modern life to that of peasants in the middle ages, and when you strip away the comforts we have because of modern technology (plentiful high calorie foods, great medical care, comfortable cheap living materials, etc), the average peasant spent less time working for his lord than we do working for the government (i.e. taxes). Most all peasants had their own plot of land to work and a house that was their own, and they were gene

From Wikipedia re The Yes Men: "...they create and maintain fake websites similar to ones they want to spoof, and then they accept invitations received on their websites to appear at conferences, symposia, and TV shows".

With commercial space flight you collect money to put a pre-built server into orbit and serve pages from there.

Now granted the bandwidth wouldn't be fast but for things like free speech related documents you really don't need speed just stable retention. You could still store video up there as well it would just be slow to get on and off the server obviously.

As long as the system had power and a good antenna the data could be available f

What do we do when bandwidth is not enough? We outsource the data and post only magnet links. I could easily imagine a server in space continuously broadcasting nothing more than pages and pages full of magnet links.

And then the gov't calls you and says "It sure would be a shame if that nice shiny new satillite of yours were to 'accidentally' get hit by some flying space debris."

While I can't argue against that I think it's not really all that likely in the short term. Especially since there's no easy way to forcibly de-orbit a satellite without either shooting it with something or bumping something into it.

And you'd really have to piss someone in the government off for them to waste an existing million dollar satellite to get rid of yours.

Though if we're discussing this in the framework of an existing cheap commercial space flight scenario you could easily put more than one up

My first thought on reading the summary was that Serverloft was a bunch of tools. As I read more and realized the press release was probably a hoax, it made me think. I know the US and Canada have different laws, and IANAL, but if this were the US, I would tend to think Serverloft would have a decent case of libel against them. They can claim "parody" all they want, but if I had merely skimmed the surface, and not read deeper, Severloft woulda been stuck with a negative connotation for me all because these a holes want to screw around. How many of Serverloft's customers read that press release and immediately went and checked if their sites were up? How many are currently looking for a new provider right now? I am all for free speech. If I say "Company A sucks" then fine. Too bad for them. (In the US, of course, I'm sure some company's attorney would want to sue you over voicing that opinion.) But to say they killed 4500 customers in a knee jerk reaction when they didn't? That is not the same thing at all. That can have actual damages. And if I were Serverloft, I'd be consulting someone about it.

It was Bush for 8 years, and his replacement happens to have a virtually identical domestic policy, which means we are essentially screwed.

Hey, now! Bush wanted to take our clumsy, wasteful pyramid scheme of a social security system and make it slightly worse, while Obama wants to take our clumsy, wasteful hellhole of a health care system and make it significantly worse. We may still be getting screwed, but it really is going in a different orifice.

That's one thing I wish people would wake up about - just because something is "organic" doesn't mean it is good for you! There are a hell of a lot of deadly, toxic, nasty things out there that are organic.

Under the current conservative party government, we've been on a slow, quiet, insidious slide toward fascism. Suppression of information is a frequent and favourite tactic of this government - which is ironic considering they campaigned on "openness and accountability" during the '06 election.

Just the obvious question since I live in Canada and have been involved in politics for 15 years, but..where were you when the Liberal party was in power and were actively censoring everyone and everything that could get them removed from office and interfering in official investigations at the federal level. Including shutting down agencies that do that investigation.

You really sound like another party hack that's upset that the liberal didn't get a 20yr majority. Too bad they were fucking the entire cou

I'm pretty sure Harper has done more to dismantle transparency in the last 3 years than Chretien/Martin did during their tenure.

Just a sampling of things I can recall off the top of my head since 2006: This [thestar.com], this [www.cbc.ca], this [www.cbc.ca], this [thestar.com], this [www.ctv.ca], this [thestar.com], this [google.com], and this [theglobeandmail.com].

I am not Canadian but I believe the name of the party is The Conservative Party. The word "conservative" lost its meaning a long time ago, particularly in the USA. How else do you explain the politicians who self-identify as "conservative" who are so eager to expand the size and power of government?

As a Canadian I can confirm that they are in fact called "The Conservative Party of Canada" or more colloquially "The assholes who somehow managed to win an election and try to claim divine mandate with less then 25% of voting Canadian behind them."

As a Canadian I can confirm that they are in fact called "The Conservative Party of Canada" or more colloquially "the fuckers."

FTFY. (I am also Canadian.) They got in riding the anti-gay-marriage ticket. The next two elections were done when the other parties were hurting, hoping that they'd win a majority. (Turnabout is fair play -- Cretin did this years ago.) No issues have been brought forward in any way that makes the citizens of this country go out and vote.

It pisses me off when they (and I mean any party) call us "voters", "constituents", or "taxpayers". We aren't any of those things. We're citizens, and they exist at our whi

I am advocating that next election we simply remove the party leaders. They have shown over and over again that that are incapable of leading, and don't even seem to be able to work and play well with others.
As you so rightly pointed out there are no good choices. I for one would vote for the first one that can show me they realize that if you have $10 you can't spend $20. This simple concept seems to be beyond most/all politicians.

That's why we need electoral reform and proportional representation. When the cast of characters you list above are forced to work with 2-3 other parties as well as a handful of independent MPs in order to get measures passed through parliament, they will suddenly discover that autocratic, partisan bullshit will harm their ability to get things done and to remain in power.

57% of the Canadian population lies within a 75000 km^2 urban area between Windsor and Quebec City, throw a bone to BC and 99.25% of the area of Canada have no voice. Arguably a good thing, but fairness and equity aren't its strengths.

The only meaningful electoral reform would be 90+% voter turnout; but in a world of milquetoast politicians afraid of being beaten by their masters, it isn't likely.

How else do you explain the politicians who self-identify as "conservative" who are so eager to expand the size and power of government?

That's an easy one. The core philosophy in conservatism is maintaining the existing power structures in society. The size of government is immaterial, and will be increased when necessary and decreased when unnecessary to the achievement of this aim. The existing power structure in the USA is based around the military industrial complex, which dictates big, big, big government (but which spends very little on actual social programs). The power structure in Canada is based around the resource economy, which dictates government small enough that the energy, mining, and forestry companies can override popular opposition. That pretty much explains everything you need to know about the differences between American and Canadian conservatives.

They forgot that part. Perhaps that happens in Canada only. In the USA, I have never once witnessed a significant decrease of the size and power of the federal government during my entire lifetime. Ever. I have seen this on the state and local levels, but never on the federal level.

That simply means that smaller federal government has never served the aims of the military-industrial establishment. It's not that they forgot, it's that smaller government is actually contrary to their aims. The US military alone spends more than all state and local governments combined, and that is only one federal department. Conservatives who think conservatism has anything to do with small government are borderline romantics, thinking back to a pre-WWII America, even a 19th-Century America where th

The word "conservative" lost its meaning a long time ago, particularly in the USA. How else do you explain the politicians who self-identify as "conservative" who are so eager to expand the size and power of government?

Well, we still have the word "libertarian" so we can tell who actually wants to make government smaller, although even that one has to be taken with a bit of skepticism sometimes.

In Canada you can get imprisoned for 3 months without seeing a judge, attorney, your embassy, or even a doctor, and without access to a telephone, simply for criticizing how the Rotary Club runs a Shelterhouse. After these 3 months, when your visa (luckily) runs out, you're shipped back to your home country sans luggage.

Now, good luck on getting any redress or compensation. Or even getting your luggage back.

It isn't just Bush and Harper. It is most government officials. Just because you agree with the current (or do you?) administration (or opposition) doesn't mean they are any better. In fact, I would suggest that as stupid as you think Bush is, many people think the same thing of Reid, Pelosi and Obama.

They are all bozos. I actually think it is a requirement for the job, and reflection of the population.

Why don't you blame the people who are REALLY responsible? The voters.

You need to extend the blame a bit further, to citizens in general. The sad fact is "the voters" is just a small subset of the citizenry, and the apathy of those who don't vote is more to blame than the misguided ideals of those who do.

I remember the one time Bush actually attempted to reduce the automatic increase in the national budget one year (he did not, in fact, attempt to spend any less money, just not increase spending by as much as usual) and he was crucified for it on almost all sides. Ever sinc

I'd like a little more confirmation before I believe the Canadian Government issued a take down notice. At best, its an employee of the Government. I didn't see it mentioned anywhere that an elected official had any part in this.

Also, the ISP is in Germany. If an employee from some department in some other company sent me a take down notice, I doubt I'd jump. If this is being reported accurately (and I have some doubts), I'd have more questions for the ISP than I would for the Canadian Government. For

The Yes Men's entire raisin d'etre is publicity. It would make sense for them to specifically choose ISPs that are willing to roll over easily.

It would make even more sense for them to just release a hoax announcement claiming that the ISP shut down their parody websites, even though the websites are actually still [enviro-canada.ca] online [ec-gc.ca].